Northern Stars by Idrils Scribe

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Chapter 1

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Elrohir is in the crow’s nest again. 

His slender shape stands sharply against the blue summer sky, curled up on the small platform high on the main mast. One bare foot dangles over the deadly drop down to the deck, but he pays the height no heed. He wanders lost in memory, with his cheek leaning against the white wood of the mast and his unseeing eyes on the horizon.

Glorfindel rushes down the quarterdeck stairs. He already has a firm hold of the ratlines, ready to swing himself up and into the rigging to fetch his ward, when Galdor’s hand lands on his shoulder. 

A knowing look passes between them, and with a nod Glorfindel restrains his inner mother hen, and releases the ladder. 

Elrohir has had the run of the ship ever since Galdor taught him how to properly climb aloft. If his young passenger yearns for space and sky and the desert wind in his face, the Nemir’s captain will give him the closest thing his ship can offer.

And a fine view Elrohir must have, perched atop the Nemir’s snow-white sails, soaring over the endless expanse of water and light, the salt-scented wind in his face and a cloud of seagulls wheeling at his feet. 

They all hoped that the small measure of freedom would lift Elrohir’s spirits, but instead of singing along with the merry gaggle of sailors reeving the sails, he sits alone and in silence.

 "I can almost see the sun shine through him.” Galdor is not mincing his words, but he is right. 

Elrohir is fading. Thus far his longing for Elladan has kept him alive, but much more of this and they could be sewing him into his shroud before the Nemir makes port.

Glorfindel and Falver, the ship’s surgeon, are doing all they can, but the only remedy that may keep Elrohir’s grief-stricken spirit housed in his body lies in getting him to his own kin, and a healer. Both await him at home, but Imladris is so far away.

“He needs Elrond.” Glorfindel cranes his neck to look at Elrohir. 

“I bid my bird to make haste.” Galdor says. “Pray that it was not waylaid. The Misty Mountains are no place for a seagull.”

They exchange a fearful glance - Galdor’s winged friend may have safely sped from the coasts of Umbar to Imladris, but even with favourable winds the bird will take weeks to deliver its message. And once Elrond hears that his missing son has been found and is headed to the Grey Havens, he must still cross the vastness of Eriador.

Glorfindel turns to the railing and watches a pair of fishing cormorants plunge down from the ship’s yardarms into the sun-speckled waves, and rise once more with writhing silver in their beaks. 

He must not give in to despair, though icy fear gnaws at his heart. 

The day’s beauty seems a mockery. The Nemir is sailing into the Gulf of Lune on a sweet summer wind. On both sides of the ship the green slopes of the Blue Mountains close in like a loving embrace. The cries of the gulls that wheel overhead have the ring of home. Not long now until they reach the Grey Havens, somewhere beyond the shimmering horizon.

Glorfindel dreads the next leg of their journey. Círdan will gladly provide an escort and a string of Lindon’s fastest horses, but the Great East Road across Arnor is long, especially when travelling in easy stages to spare Elrohir’s health. Rushing him to Imladris and Elrond’s care will take a month at the very least. Glorfindel tries not to imagine Elrohir dying halfway, in a rented room at some roadside inn.

To Glorfindel falls the grave decision whether to attempt that perilous trek, or to keep Elrohir in Lindon, where Cirdan’s healers can try their best. Elrond might reach them in time. 

But then, he might not.

“Shall I give it a try?” asks a voice behind them. Calear, too, has a concerned eye on Elrohir. 

Glorfindel turns around to exchange a look with the wounded spy, resting beneath his sailcloth awning. These last calm weeks of their journey have him looking a little better. His bruises have faded, but captivity with the Black Númenóreans of Umbar left him deeply marked. 

Calear’s hands are useless lumps of flesh, invisible beneath bulky splints and propped up on folded blankets against the swelling. Every last bone has been shattered beyond what can be mended aboard ship, or perhaps at all - there has been talk of amputations. 

Calear is old, and strong in body and spirit. Thus far he has maintained his brave and cheerful air, but Glorfindel has heard the surgeon rush to his bedside in the night, when Calear screams at the torturer haunting his dreams. 

“Please, my friend,” Glorfindel sends Calear a fond smile. The Falathrim are loyal and hardy. Despite his gruesome injuries, Calear still looks out for Elrohir.   

“Elrohir!” Calear calls out. 

Up aloft Elrohir’s head shoots up. As he glances down at Calear his sullen expression changes to a kindly smile, and at once he begins to climb down the ratlines. Not as limber as a sailor of the Falas, perhaps, but he is getting the hang of it. 

Elrohir understands well enough that Calear suffered for his sake, and has taken to looking after the wounded man. It is a strange arrangement: between the pair of them Glorfindel cannot say who is saving who. Elrohir is a walking reminder that Calear’s torment was not in vain, and in turn Calear has given Elrohir someone to take care of, a purpose, which is precisely what he needs to hold on. 

Much like his father, Elrohir needs to be needed. Better to give him a worthy task to keep him out of his own head, than Glorfindel hovering like an anxious nursemaid.

“My lad,” Calear says convivially when Elrohir lightly drops down on the deck beside his awning. “Would you fetch my medicine? My wrists ache, and I would not bother Falver.”

The ship’s surgeon is meticulous with Calear’s drugs. Even now she is keeping a keen eye on both her patients from where she sits splicing rope across the deck. She would have seen to Calear’s every need herself, but has agreed to let Elrohir do the work. 

Elrohir disappears down the aftercastle stairs, to the sick bay, and soon emerges bearing a cup with a precisely measured amount of poppy tincture mixed with wine. 

He will make a fine healer one day. He knows not to distress Calear with fussing, which would only remind him of his infirmity. Instead he is gentle, but businesslike when he puts the cup to Calear’s lips and tips it.

Calear raises a hand as if to take the cup, but his fingers are encased in stiff plaster and all he achieves is a jolt of pain so sharp that he cannot keep it off his face. 

“Would you like anything else?” Elrohir asks, very kindly. “A game, perhaps, to take your mind off it?”

The pair have taken to whiling away the long days aboard playing games. First one from Harad that Elrohir knows well, but gradually Calear has called for Elvish ones, and by now he has taught Elrohir a very passable game of chess. 

“Back for another drubbing?” Calear musters a smile that grows even wider when Elrohir mirrors it. “I will gladly give it to you!”

Elrohir keeps that smile as he fetches the chess board and sets it out atop a crate. The game is Galdor’s, carved from walrus ivory with swan-ships in full sail for rooks, the board ringed with lovely lines of inlaid wave crests. At their first game Elrohir marvelled at the small lodestone set into the base of each figurine, holding it fast to the iron chessboard even when the ship is tossed in the worst of weather. He already knows the setup, his gestures measured and efficient as he places the pieces. He gives Calear the advantage of playing white.

“Selling the lion’s skin before it is caught? Mind yourself, old Elf!” Elrohir calls the challenge. He sits cross legged, his hand hovering over the board, ready for Calear to tell him where to move his pieces for him. 

Instead, a silence falls.

Elrohir was speaking Umbarian Adûnaic, as they sometimes do between them. He called Calear ‘Nimir’. The Númenórean word for ‘Elf’ is not an insult, in itself, but Calear has been called that and worse by less kindly voices, and the reminder tips him headlong into horrors past. 

Calear’s eyes go wide and wild, his face a mask of terror, and for a moment he is elsewhere. 

Elrohir is unfazed. He has seen this before, that much is clear. 

“Hey, my friend,” he says in a gentle, almost sing-song voice, switching to his halting Sindarin. “The sun is up and the day is bright. You are in the temple no more.” His hands have stilled in his lap - he knows better than to touch a man in this state.

A long moment passes before Calear shakes his head like a horse beset by flies. “I know.” 

Elrohir has gone pale, and he eyes his friend with knowing concern. “It will pass,” he says. Judging by his calm tone, he finds it nothing out of the ordinary to see a man’s mind so thrown with torture that he thinks himself chained to Melkor’s altar while sitting in broad daylight. “Think of other things, and it will pass.”

Glorfindel tries not to imagine where Elrohir would have gained the experience for such knowing advice. A bleak anger burns in his heart at the Mortals who did that to him. 

He presses down that rage. Vengeance will not help Elrohir, nor Calear. Glorfindel has killed enough Black Númenóreans, two princes among them. It must suffice. 

Instead he watches as both wounded souls straighten their backs, and each makes himself appear merry and composed before the other. 

“Second pawn, two squares,” says Calear, but his mutilated hand twitches in his lap.

Elrohir has managed another smile. He does as he is asked, and pretends not to look. 

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Chapter End Notes

Welcome back everyone!
Once more, I'm trying to cure my perfectionism by dropping my usual MO of meticulously planning my stories, and making it up as I go instead. I'm laying down the tracks in front of the train here.
Comments fuel the creative fires. What do you think of the story so far? what do you expect will happen? Any requests/suggestions for future chapters? You’d make my day by dropping me a line!
Updates will happen as I write, mostly on the weekends.
See you soon for the next one,